In which I hope I'm not going to the special hell
Much rambling ahead. Depending on where you're coming from, you probably already know part of what I'm going to say.
With both Death Note and Hetalia, I sidled into fandom participation through the kink meme. dn_kink is pretty much what it says on the tin. Character(s) + kink -> sexual shenanigans. hetalia_kink, meanwhile, has expressed hopes it will be as epic as the meme for Phoenix Wright - a meme which, while it still contains kink, has diversified into more of a general request meme. I've browsed there a few times, and it has "kinks" like "[Clown character] runs away from the circus to join a family." The Hetalia meme has a similar drift. Which is just fine by me, though the fact that it still says kink meme on the tin has possibly contributed to some, shall we say, misunderstandings, since with a kink meme, the immediate association is porn. I'll be coming back to this later.
Now, when I started writing for dn_kink, I took the opportunity to try writing some things that I wouldn't have dared put under my old username, such as L being held as a sex slave or Misa pegging cross-dressing Higuchi or Ryuk preparing to screw Light's corpse or L being traumatized by gang rape or L moonlighting as a prostitute or, or, or. You get the picture. I'm less embarrassed about it now, hence the existence of this account. It helped that I got some very nice comments about my handling of the character psychology and such (thanks for that, folks).
And then, back in November, I was doing preliminary research for a plotbunny I had for a World War II AU. And then (I'm fairly sure this is somehow related, maybe it was just all the WWII on the brain at the time) I discovered Hetalia. Or rather, rediscovered it; I'm pretty sure I ran into it once or twice before (ironically, I think that first encounter was on fandomsecrets. This time, though, it stuck. And so I browsed the primary community, and read the scanlations... and then I found hetalia_kink.
And then, I came upon fics like this one. For all I know the author wouldn't want to be seen in the same room with me, so please don't blame him/her, but still - it struck me, and it also affected my view of South Korea's personification (fandom shorthand is Korea, since there's no North Korea in Hetalia as of yet, so going with that for the rest of this post).
(Tangent time! I do acknowledge Hetalia has its flaws, and I personally believe its portrayal of Korea thus far is one of them. He was said to be "fundamentally serious" in his old profile, but that came off as a bit of an informed trait, given that about all he seems to do in canon so far is goof off. Yes, it's a comedy and goofing-off is to be expected, and I'm not demanding that Himaruya go into all the gory details - but China at least had a strip where Japan went after him with a sword, and it was acknowledged that China had a right to be upset by that. Korea's "hatred" of Japan, meanwhile, is played for laughs, without a hint (so far) as to why Korea might not be all that fond of him.)
(Another tangent: I've gotten to considering the idea of justice as applied to anthropomorphic countries. For example, a grudge that would be understandable between two regular people for a given horrible thing would have something like a statute of limitations with countries. And you can't exactly clap them up in country jail.)
So I read fics like that, on and off the meme (including a heartbreaking one with Germany and Italy, and same disclaimer applies here). I read enough fics like that on the meme to get the impression that it wasn't all about the sex over there. I browsed fandomsecrets and read people complaining that the nastier aspects of history were being glossed over, as well as that a Japanese person dared to crack jokes about World War II (The horror! The horror! Excuse me, my eyes seem to have rolled out of my head), etcetera. I read people commenting on the skeletons in various countries' closets, Japan's included. And then I thought "Why don't I give this a shot?"
The answer: "Because if I drop the ball on something like this, with anthropomorphic countries, I'll die of humiliation!"
With Death Note, you see, I was nervous about the sex. With Hetalia, I was nervous about the international baggage.
The apparent solution: If I was going to give it a shot, the "kink" meme seemed an ideal venue. If I really dropped the ball I could discreetly vanish back into lurkage. And it also might make a requester happy. So I paged through the meme, found a request for the Rape of Nanking, read up on it for a while (and found out how much the late Iris Chang got wrong), and then filled it. And I got some very nice comments. And I basked, and I finished up the semester, and I started on filling some Taiwan/Korea.
Then, some weeks later, I came across an idle comment on hetalia that was something along the lines of "Some people at fandomsecrets are under the impression that we all masturbate to the Rape of Nanking." Being curious, I headed back over to fandomsecrets and looked at the back issues and... well. Yikes.
Grossly-simplified-to-the-point-of-absurdity observation, not to be taken seriously: Before I posted that fic, I noticed people complaining about how the comic avoided dealing with problematic aspects of history. After, I noticed people complaining about how fans like Yours Truly wrote about problematic aspects of history and posted said writings on the kink meme.
I also noticed that the kink meme thing kind of, I dunno, cut both ways, except it really didn't. It was afforded all the deterrents and none of the privileges. Because when someone said "Well, it's a kink meme, you get crazy things there" someone else would say "But other fandoms' kink memes don't have Rape of Nanking porn!" And sometimes when someone said "Well, I actually read it and not only does it appreciate that it was a Bad Thing, it wasn't exactly porn either" (and thanks for that, folks) someone else would say "Well then, it shouldn't have been on a kink meme, because everyone knows they're for porn." Perhaps this all could have been nipped in the bud with a bit of relabeling, or if I'd sucked it up and posted the fic on the main comm. Or perhaps not.
Phew. Well, since I outed myself I thought I should explain myself a bit, just in case anyone cares. Over and out.
With both Death Note and Hetalia, I sidled into fandom participation through the kink meme. dn_kink is pretty much what it says on the tin. Character(s) + kink -> sexual shenanigans. hetalia_kink, meanwhile, has expressed hopes it will be as epic as the meme for Phoenix Wright - a meme which, while it still contains kink, has diversified into more of a general request meme. I've browsed there a few times, and it has "kinks" like "[Clown character] runs away from the circus to join a family." The Hetalia meme has a similar drift. Which is just fine by me, though the fact that it still says kink meme on the tin has possibly contributed to some, shall we say, misunderstandings, since with a kink meme, the immediate association is porn. I'll be coming back to this later.
Now, when I started writing for dn_kink, I took the opportunity to try writing some things that I wouldn't have dared put under my old username, such as L being held as a sex slave or Misa pegging cross-dressing Higuchi or Ryuk preparing to screw Light's corpse or L being traumatized by gang rape or L moonlighting as a prostitute or, or, or. You get the picture. I'm less embarrassed about it now, hence the existence of this account. It helped that I got some very nice comments about my handling of the character psychology and such (thanks for that, folks).
And then, back in November, I was doing preliminary research for a plotbunny I had for a World War II AU. And then (I'm fairly sure this is somehow related, maybe it was just all the WWII on the brain at the time) I discovered Hetalia. Or rather, rediscovered it; I'm pretty sure I ran into it once or twice before (ironically, I think that first encounter was on fandomsecrets. This time, though, it stuck. And so I browsed the primary community, and read the scanlations... and then I found hetalia_kink.
And then, I came upon fics like this one. For all I know the author wouldn't want to be seen in the same room with me, so please don't blame him/her, but still - it struck me, and it also affected my view of South Korea's personification (fandom shorthand is Korea, since there's no North Korea in Hetalia as of yet, so going with that for the rest of this post).
(Tangent time! I do acknowledge Hetalia has its flaws, and I personally believe its portrayal of Korea thus far is one of them. He was said to be "fundamentally serious" in his old profile, but that came off as a bit of an informed trait, given that about all he seems to do in canon so far is goof off. Yes, it's a comedy and goofing-off is to be expected, and I'm not demanding that Himaruya go into all the gory details - but China at least had a strip where Japan went after him with a sword, and it was acknowledged that China had a right to be upset by that. Korea's "hatred" of Japan, meanwhile, is played for laughs, without a hint (so far) as to why Korea might not be all that fond of him.)
(Another tangent: I've gotten to considering the idea of justice as applied to anthropomorphic countries. For example, a grudge that would be understandable between two regular people for a given horrible thing would have something like a statute of limitations with countries. And you can't exactly clap them up in country jail.)
So I read fics like that, on and off the meme (including a heartbreaking one with Germany and Italy, and same disclaimer applies here). I read enough fics like that on the meme to get the impression that it wasn't all about the sex over there. I browsed fandomsecrets and read people complaining that the nastier aspects of history were being glossed over, as well as that a Japanese person dared to crack jokes about World War II (The horror! The horror! Excuse me, my eyes seem to have rolled out of my head), etcetera. I read people commenting on the skeletons in various countries' closets, Japan's included. And then I thought "Why don't I give this a shot?"
The answer: "Because if I drop the ball on something like this, with anthropomorphic countries, I'll die of humiliation!"
With Death Note, you see, I was nervous about the sex. With Hetalia, I was nervous about the international baggage.
The apparent solution: If I was going to give it a shot, the "kink" meme seemed an ideal venue. If I really dropped the ball I could discreetly vanish back into lurkage. And it also might make a requester happy. So I paged through the meme, found a request for the Rape of Nanking, read up on it for a while (and found out how much the late Iris Chang got wrong), and then filled it. And I got some very nice comments. And I basked, and I finished up the semester, and I started on filling some Taiwan/Korea.
Then, some weeks later, I came across an idle comment on hetalia that was something along the lines of "Some people at fandomsecrets are under the impression that we all masturbate to the Rape of Nanking." Being curious, I headed back over to fandomsecrets and looked at the back issues and... well. Yikes.
Grossly-simplified-to-the-point-of-absurdity observation, not to be taken seriously: Before I posted that fic, I noticed people complaining about how the comic avoided dealing with problematic aspects of history. After, I noticed people complaining about how fans like Yours Truly wrote about problematic aspects of history and posted said writings on the kink meme.
I also noticed that the kink meme thing kind of, I dunno, cut both ways, except it really didn't. It was afforded all the deterrents and none of the privileges. Because when someone said "Well, it's a kink meme, you get crazy things there" someone else would say "But other fandoms' kink memes don't have Rape of Nanking porn!" And sometimes when someone said "Well, I actually read it and not only does it appreciate that it was a Bad Thing, it wasn't exactly porn either" (and thanks for that, folks) someone else would say "Well then, it shouldn't have been on a kink meme, because everyone knows they're for porn." Perhaps this all could have been nipped in the bud with a bit of relabeling, or if I'd sucked it up and posted the fic on the main comm. Or perhaps not.
Phew. Well, since I outed myself I thought I should explain myself a bit, just in case anyone cares. Over and out.